Mikayla regarded Asika, baffled. “You’re a System Moderator?” she parroted.

  “That’s right! I squash bugs, patch out glitches, handle weird fringe cases. Like all faeries, it is my sacred duty to keep the world turning!” She mimed rolling her arms around each other, then thrust them outwards like a cheerleader. “Goooooo, faeries!”

  Mikayla blinked.

  “Give it a couple of days, you’ll get used to her,” Anza added.

  “So, faeries are System Moderators?” She recalled that Nocturnus had mentioned something like that before, hadn’t he?

  “You got it!” Asika struck a pious pose. “We’re the followers of the Cosmic Scales, tasked with upholding and maintaining the System so that civilisation will continue to be a light that brightens the world,” Her voice took on an airy quality, like she was quoting someone.

  “You rehearsed that,” Keldryn accused, unimpressed by Asika’s attempts at showmanship.

  “Yep I did!” She didn’t try to pretend otherwise. “By the way, we should all pipe down, someone’s coming,”

  “I can’t hear anything?” Keldryn’s ears pricked up.

  “Me neither. But I have a really good Scan. Wanna know how many spiders are in this room?” Asika was disturbingly gleeful about the prospect.

  “Er. No, thanks,”

  “Your loss. Most people would be happy to know there aren’t any spiders here,”

  “Quiet,” Anza commanded.

  Sure enough, a moment later heavy footsteps started to resound though the room, growing louder and louder, and Mikayla’s inexpert ear picked out what she thought was at least three people. Her suspicions were proven correct when the door slammed open, and a trio of large and muscular men strode into the cell block like they owned it. Two of them fanned out, checking the rest of the prisoners, but the one whom she took to be the leader purposefully approached her and Keldryn’s cages.

  He was a human, built like a lumberjack, with a well-groomed black beard and eyebrows to match. His face seemed set into a permanent sneer, with cold and calculating eyes. He was dressed in steel-studded leather armour that had several notable scratches carved into it, and hands clad in thick woollen gloves. Every step he took echoed with a clang of metal from his armoured boots.

  “Hello again!” It seemed that Asika’s perpetual cheerful demeanour had no off switch. “So, like I was saying last time we met,”

  The man’s boot swung out and kicked her cage with enough force to knock it over and send her crashing against the wall. “You couldn’t say a single word worth listening to, little blue-blood,” the man spat out of the side of his mouth, barely even sparing her a glance. “You two,” His gaze raked across the two newcomers.

  “Who are you?” Keldryn demanded, folding his arms and putting on a show of being unimpressed. The way his tail bristled was the only indicator of how tense he was.

  “My friends call me Flyreh. My enemies tend to be too dead to speak,”

  A shiver of fear ran down Mikayla’s spine, but it was muted and easy to clamp down on. Her Willpower-focused build was putting in the work; she wasn’t going to let this man intimidate her. Fear is the mind-killer, or something like that. “If you wanted us dead, we would be. Does that make us your friends?” Mikayla challenged.

  Flyreh turned and eyed her, the tendons in his thick neck tensing. His teeth, surprisingly straight and white, poked out in a smile. “Heh. I don’t think so. But you’ve got guts, girl. What’s your name?”

  “Mikayla Aiadon,”

  “Hm. You’re the one who had the Black Knight Core. Only a scant few people would use a Core stained by the Black Traitor’s legacy. Why?”

  “What have you done with -” Mikayla caught herself before she could refer to Nocturnus as ‘him’ and hastily corrected herself, “- it?”

  “Don’t worry, it’s safer than you are. You don’t see Black Knights often. A rare piece like that will be a fine addition to my collection. You haven’t answered my question,”

  “I didn’t have any alternatives, and didn’t know about Nocturnus Virralis until I met Keldryn. And honestly, why should I care? It’s a good Core, it’s reliable. I wouldn’t have survived this long without it,” Rare piece? Collection? Mikayla revised her assessment of the man. He wasn’t just a gang leader. Some kind of Core collector, perhaps, with an eye for rare and valuable Cores. If that were the case, he would probably lose his shit if he knew that the Black Traitor’s Armour Core itself was in his possession, one that was not only made by Astralia herself but complete with the ghost of its original wearer. It was bad enough that he was already interested simply because it was a rare Black Knight-model Core. Mikayla absolutely could not let him figure out what it really was.

  “Huh,” Flyreh nodded thoughtfully, oblivious to her inner monologue. “I can respect that. Where’d you get it, anyway?”

  “I picked it off a corpse,”

  “Pity. Guess there’s no telling its provenance then,” Flyreh looked disappointed, further confirming her suspicions.

  “Don’t touch it too much. I’m going to want it back,” Mikayla wasn’t sure how she was staying so cool and collected under this much pressure. The man was clearly much higher level than her, she was at his mercy. Was it just her Willpower putting in the work? Or was her mounting fury drowning out her fear?

  “Oh, really? Hah. Then come and take it, any time!” Flyreh bared his teeth at her.

  He schooled his features and flexed his wrists, visibly wrestling his wilder side back under control as he reached into a pocket. “But in the meantime, there’s something I need from you two,” His hand came out, holding an empty syringe.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  At the far end of the prison, they heard one of the goons addressing the prisoners. “Alright, blood bags, roll up your sleeves. You know how this works,”

  “What do you want with our blood?” Mikayla demanded.

  Flyreh’s arm flashed through the bars, faster than she could dodge, and grabbed at her wrist. He twisted her arm, ignoring the way she winced in pain, and drove the syringe into her vein. “Don’t worry about that. Just be grateful it’s enough reason for me to keep you alive,”

  Mikayla winced as the needle broke her skin and sampled the contents of her veins. As the syringe sucked blood from her wrist, she saw, in the corner of her vision, that her Mana bar was dropping. [MANA: 1525/1600]

  She struggled, but couldn’t break Flyreh’s grip. This had to have been what Keldryn was talking about, when he’d warned her about level disparity. Flyreh was so much stronger than her that she couldn’t resist him at all.

  Not yet, anyway.

  Keldryn stared hatefully at their captor, who was unimpressed as he drew a draught of blood from Keldryn’s wrist. “Now, you kids behave, alright? You don’t need to die,” Flyreh glanced back at Mikayla. “I like the fire in your eyes, girlie. Survive this and you might just get your chance to turn the tables on me. I’d quite like to see that, so don’t screw it up,”

  Watching him as he started making his way down the line, Mikayla’s brow furrowed as she noticed that the thugs were ignoring Asika. “Why aren’t you taking blood from Asika, too?”

  “None of your business,” Flyreh brushed her off. “Lovely chatting to you, girl. If you survive long enough for us to meet again . . well, I’ll leave that up to you to decide. And if you want to kill me, then take your best shot. I’ll enjoy squeezing a Level or two out of you,” With the bandolier of syringes in his hands, he left the cell, followed by his two goons.

  “You two, hand out the food and deliver these to the nerd, then back to your posts,” they heard him command, and the guards distributed several dozen plates of what looked like dog food around the cells and cages. The civilian prisoners began to lethargically eat, but Asika shook her head and pressed a finger to her lips when a plate was placed outside Mikayla’s cage.

  The guards didn’t bother checking whether or not she’d started eating before the door swung shut.

  “The food’s drugged. Don’t eat it unless you want to join the other prisoners in la-la land,” Asika finally felt at liberty to say.

  “Got it,” Mikayla looked at Keldryn, who was nursing his arm, then at Anza. “So, blood cult, huh?”

  “Yeah,” Anza growled.

  “Anyone have any idea why they’re stealing our blood?”

  “It’s gotta be something to do with alchemy. Nexeus if I know what, though,” Anza shook her head.

  “Sapient blood is part of the potion that keeps livestock from becoming Kaijus. That’s all I know, but I don’t think that’s it,” Keldryn shrugged.

  “Alchemy isn’t my area, either,” Asika contributed with an apologetic smile. “Maybe they’ve discovered some kind of exploit using sapient blood to make themselves stronger,” She frowned at the thought. “There’s no way to know unless someone tells us,”

  “Great,” Mikayla groaned.

  “Does it matter?” Anza cut in. “Whatever they’re doing don’t change the fact that we gotta get out of here and alert the Guard that they gotta smash this whole operation down,”

  “Yeah, about that. You say it has to be us who go and alert Topwater, but do you really think people are going to believe a couple of kids? Including someone ‘pretending’ to be a Ranger? We’ll be laughed out of town,” Keldryn folded his arms, brows furrowed.

  Anza glanced at him. “That . . um . . hadn’t occurred to me,”

  “I’ve got a different quibble with the plan. Are we sure that Lahlee doesn’t have any co-conspirators in Topwater who would silence us to cover their tracks?” Mikayla contributed.

  Anza bit her lip. “Hadn’t thought of that either. Um . . gah, frank it, I told the old man when he sent me on this job that I’m no good at spy stuff!”

  “Don’t worry. Just leave those little details to me!” Asika drew the rest of the group’s attention. “Faeries can’t lie. Everyone knows that. With me there to corroborate your story, no one will doubt any of it. And if we report to Ataraxia as well as the Guard . . well, this is technically outside our jurisdiction but we have enough connections to trustworthy people that we can bring down the rain on Lahlee,” Mikayla quietly noted another local saying.

  “We don’t even need to escape, not really. We just need to get to the Ataraxia Node, then I can send a distress signal and my people will take care of the rest,” Asika paused. “Wait, no, that’s right, I’m in mortal peril. That means we do have jurisdiction after all! Yay!”

  Anza breathed an audible sigh of relief. “We are so starring lucky that y’all showed up, you know that?”

  “Maybe you are. As far as I’m concerned this whole operation has been an unmitigated disaster,” Asika groaned, burying her head in her hands as her smile turned into a grimace.

  “Uh-huh. I have to say, I don’t see how getting captured helps you dismantle this blood cult business,” Keldryn acerbically commented.

  “That’s the thing! I wasn’t even here looking for a blood cult! We had no idea that all this was happening! Which is really very embarrassing!” Asika whined, holding her head in her hands. “I was sent out because we detected a weird new profile appearing in the ruins of old Balmwind, and that usually means some unfortunate soul got Stranded by the spatial anomalies in the Kaiju Coast, and someone’s gotta send them back home. It should have been a quick and easy job for my first real mission. So why is it that all this is happening instead?!”

  Mikayla froze and stared at the faerie. “You can send me home?!”

  Asika cracked an eye open. “What? Wait, that was you? You’re Stranded?”

  “Yes! That was me! And I’ve almost died so many times! Tell me you can do it! Please? Can you send me home?!”

  “I mean, maybe?” Asika looked uncertain.

  “And what exactly does ‘maybe’ mean?!” Mikayla demanded.

  “Okay, okay, hang on!” the faerie protested. “Don’t get your hopes up too high, we’re not in a good spot. This whole blood cult business has really screwed everything up. The spatial distortions that sometimes pop up in this region are temporary! They last only a few minutes, but they do leave traces that take much longer to fade, usually weeks, depending on how big the distortion was. Buuuuuuuut it’s already been weeks. So, so, uh,” Asika stammered, small squares of blue light playing around her fingers as she did napkin math. “If we can get out of here, and retrieve my equipment, and get back to the place where you entered this world as soon as possible, then . . maybe. We won’t know for sure until we’re there,” Asika offered an apologetic smile.

  Mikayla sighed. “So, I’m on a time limit, and I don’t know what the time limit is or whether it’s already expired. Lovely. That means we need to get out of here, immediately,”

  “Not gonna be easy,” Anza interrupted. “We’ve got that Flyreh bastard, the traitor Lahlee, and probably at least a couple of other combatants worth a damn to deal with. Plus a gaggle of mooks who might be able to overwhelm us with numbers. I like my odds against Lahlee, but Asika Identified Flyreh as Level 58. Seven levels above me. I’m good, but I’m not ‘fight all that solo and win’ good. If we’re gonna bust out and shut down this operation, y’all are gonna need to pull your weight,“

  “Easier said than done. I’m level 16,” Mikayla grumbled.

  “Don’t stress, I’ve got a plan. A way to get you two kiddos powered up enough to be able to hold your own once we break out,” Anza whispered.

  “Anything. We’re ready,” Keldryn nodded firmly, and Mikayla agreed.

  “Great. They ain’t taking you two seriously like they are me, ‘cause y’all’re low level. That gives us an opportunity. We just need you two to get real strong real fast, and break those cages open. Then y’all can free me and Asika and we’ll fight our way out,”

  Keldryn’s enthusiasm dimmed. “Oh, sure, just get much stronger very quickly. We’re in cages in the cellar. The only things to kill here are a bunch of innocent prisoners,”

  “Nuh-uh. No killing, not this time,” Anza promised them. “You two are gonna clear the first Schema Lock early,”

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